Self-Improvement Quotes

Self-Improvement Quotes

That discipline which corrects the eagerness of worldly passions, which fortifies the heart with virtuous principles, which enlightens the mind with useful knowledge, and furnishes to it matter of enjoyment from within itself, is of more consequence to real felicity than all the provisions which we can make of the goods of fortune. -Blair

You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself. -Ruskin

I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday. -Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Is it asked, how can the laboring man find time for self-culture? I answer, that an earnest purpose finds time, or makes it. It seizes on spare moments, and turns fragments to golden account. A man who follows his calling with industry and spirit, and uses his earnings economically, will always have some portion of the day at command. And it is astonishing how fruitful of improvement a short season becomes, when eagerly seized and faithfully used. It has often been observed, that those who have the most time at their disposal profit by it the least. A single hour in the day, steadily given to the study of some interesting subject, brings unexpected accumulations of knowledge. -Channing

People never improve unless they look to some standard or example higher or better than themselves. -Tryon Edwards (1809-1894)

“Know thyself,” said the old philosophy. “Improve thyself,” saith the new. Our great object in time is not to waste our passions and gifts on the things external that we must leave behind, but that we cultivate within us all that we can carry into the eternal progress beyond. -Bulwer

People seldom improve, when they have no other model but themselves to copy after. -Goldsmith

If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven’t done anything today. -Lou Holtz

Each year, one vicious habit rooted out in time ought to make the worst man good. -Franklin

Without continuous personal development, you are now all that you will ever become, and hell starts when the person you are meets the person you could have been. -Eli Cohen

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self. -Aristotle

Before preparing to improve the world, first look around your own home three times. -Chinese Proverb

Get away from the crowd when you can. Keep yourself to yourself, if only for a few hours daily. -Arthur Brisbane

He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp. -Georg C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

Rebellion against your handicaps gets you nowhere. Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world–making the most of one’s best. -Harry Emerson Fosdick

All of us, who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door and the whole world will be clean. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development. -Brian Tracy

Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves–to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today, to do our work with more force than ever before. -Stewart Johnson

What you become directly influences what you get. -Jim Rohn

I care not so much what I am in the opinion of others as what I am in my own; I would be rich of myself and not by borrowing. -Michel de Montaigne

Whoever will cultivate their own mind will find full employment. Every virtue does not only require great care in the planting, but as much daily solicitude in cherishing as exotic fruits and flowers; the vices and passions (which I am afraid are the natural product of the soil) demand perpetual weeding. Add to this the search after knowledge… and the longest life is too short. -Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762)

The best rules to form a young man, are, to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one’s own opinions, and value others that deserve it. -Sir William Temple (1628-1699)

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